Spark of a Heart: Reel Me In
by Artemis Sherwood
Summary: Part 1 of a series, follows Series 2. Meeting the Doctor was pure chance with a touch of TARDIS-whimsy, falling for Rose Tyler was mere happenstance, but the Doctor falling for her was the beginning of a whole new adventure. Endgame 13/fem!OC. Onesided 10/OC, a little fem!OC/Rose.
1. Attack of the Graske

**Author's Note: I was reading through 'The Dread of Tomorrow and Yesterday' by deathsweetqueen and, despite being someone who has really hated the 10th Doctor for a long time for some kind of stupid reasons, found myself really enjoying the chapters w/ 10. So I was inspired to write this story, which is a little different from my other DW fics since the OC doesn't know jack shit about the Doctor. The cover I made myself and the person who I based my OC off of is an Australian Aboriginal model by the name of Maminydjama Magnolia Maymuru.**

 **Word Count: 4,212**

* * *

The loudest sound Elissa had ever heard in her entire life sounded as she finished washing her hands; it was a harsh, steady wheezing with a hint of metal and it just about scared her to death. Across the tiled floor of the museum's bathroom, near the entrance door, something appeared. Covering her ears with dripping hands, Elissa backed against the wall and watched in horror as an enormous box began to materialize.

The grating wheezing subsided quickly, but it left her ears ringing. A door opened in the incredibly blue box and a man from inside stuck his head out. "You!" Elissa forgot how to breathe for a moment. "I need you!"

Cold water dripped down her cheeks as she stared unblinkingly at the stranger.

"Don't just stand there _gawking_ at me," the man snapped in a distinctly English accent, "get inside!"

Elissa eyed the box, noting that it would be too close of a fit to stand inside with more than one person, and then looked back at the man. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. Who the hell are you?" He shook his head with an accompanied wave of dismissal before Elissa could respond. "Never mind. Look, the TARDIS brought me here, presumably to find help, and you're all I've got right now, so just come inside!"

The Doctor turned on his heel and retreated further into the box. _But that can't be right_ , thought Elissa. _There's nowhere to go-._ She caught a glimpse of silver railings, stony structures, and swirling yellows and oranges beyond the fluttering tail end of the man's coat. Racing forward to brace her hands against the doorway, Elissa peered inside and choked on her own tongue.

"What're you waiting for? _Inside!_ "

Trembling fingers pointed to the box's exterior as Elissa stumbled over her words. "B-But it's-… It's-!"

Standing in the center of a room easily twenty times the size of the box was the Doctor, hunched over a strange table with a centerpiece that stretched up to the ceiling, several meters overhead. Yellow-orange lights cast an otherworldly glow across pale stone archways, some of which were decorated with black tubing and wires. The hollow ringing of feet on metal grating made Elissa start and she looked down to see that she had stepped inside the box without even realizing it.

The door slammed shut behind Elissa and the same horrible wheezing from before started up again as the box lurched to one side. She stumbled into a railing and clung to it for dear life, her legs wobbling and finally giving out a second later.

"Oi, Curly!" the Doctor shouted over the wheezing. "I need you!"

He appeared in front of her what seemed like a split second later, eyes wide and his hands grasping her biceps. His mouth was moving and sound was definitely coming out, but Elissa couldn't comprehend any of it. A jolt of electricity zapped the palm of her hand and it was as if a switch had suddenly been flipped. Still somewhat weak at the knees, Elissa let the man lead her to the table-that-was-definitely-not-a-table as she tried to understand what he was saying.

"This! This here? This is the dimensional stabilizer," the Doctor said, pointing to a lever with a yellow handle. He gestured to the weird looking pipe with a wooden handle below it. "This is the vortex loop and this is the vector tracker." Elissa stared at the dial that looked identical to an egg timer and wondered if maybe she was off her rocker. "I need you to pull or turn whatever thing I tell you to when I tell you to. Can you do that?"

Elissa looked straight into the man's eyes and, against her better judgement, nodded. He nodded in return and then darted around the table to the other side, the centerpiece blocking him entirely. The box seemed to tilt to one side again and Elissa grabbed hold of the table's edge, leaning with the movement as though she'd been doing so her entire life.

"Vector tracker!" called the Doctor. "One whole rotation to the left!"

The tracker clicked rapidly as she turned it; she felt the clicking of the notches through the metal as the vibrations tickled her fingertips. Elissa could hear the blood rushing in her ears and she rubbed her shoulder against her right ear with a grimace.

"Tracker again! Two rotations!"

The box seemed to scream then and Elissa felt her stomach fly into her throat. If she didn't know any better, she might've thought that they were falling. The Doctor screamed, too, his voice frantic and pinched.

"Stabilizer! _Stabilizer_ , Curly!"

Elissa froze and stared at the intruments laid out beneath her hands. She couldn't remember what was what. The yellow handled lever suddenly seemed to be the only thing in the entire universe, so she grabbed hold of it and pulled as hard as she could. Her tunnel vision disappeared like early morning mist and then everything was very still and very quiet.

Several locks of midnight shaded hair had fallen over Elissa's face. A chill ran up her spine as she blew her hair from her eyes and it then occurred to her that someone was watching her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing but the box's windowed doors. Soft, curious whirring reached her ears and Elissa stole a glance at the ceiling, trying to trail the invisible eyes she _knew_ were there. The whirring rose in pitch, then dissapated, leaving Elissa unsure if she had imagined it in the first place.

"Yes, I've got him!"

The Doctor's voice drew Elissa from her trance. She stepped around the table to see the stranger hunched over again, typing away on an early 2000's desktop computer. The computer screen itself showed a map of England overlaid with a semi-transparent grid. Within one of the hexagons was a white, flashing light.

"What is that?" she asked, finally managing to find her voice.

"That," said the Doctor, "is where the Graske is. I was having a _devil_ of a time tracing him, but I found him here in London, 1883." While Elissa tried to replay his words in her head, the Dctor squinted and leaned closer to the screen. "On Christmas Day, of all days. Blimey, I just had Christmas. I don't need another one!"

Elissa squinted at the screen, too, watching as the Doctor zoomed in on the blinking blip, eventually moving to a video of a snowy street spotted with people in historical costume. _Christmas was three months ago. What the hell is going on?_ she wondered as she looked at the Doctor again.

"No, I can't see him." He sighed. "Alright, back to your station, Curly."

Elissa blinked and gaped at the man, her brain frantically trying to fit together the pieces of an impossible puzzle. Her mouth tried to fit around a dozen different questions, all of them too big or confusing to comprehend, so instead she settled for asking, "What?"

Guiding her back round the table with his arms on her shoulders, the Doctor placed her in her original spot. "I promise I'll explain this all as soon as possible, but I need you here. I need your help. Please." When Elissa didn't respond with even a nod or shake of her head, the Doctor became noticably more agitated. "Look, my friend's in trouble. This Graske attacked her, he did something to her, and I have to get her back. I can't do this on my own and I don't have her with me, so I need you to help me. _Please!_ "

"Okay."

Darting out of sight, the Doctor began insttructing Elissa once more. The box hummed and vibrated a little, then thudded with a final groan hardly a minute later. Stepping away from the table-that-she-knew-needed-a-better-name-because-it-wasn't-a-table, Elissa raised her hands so they hovered in front of her chest.

"What's happening?" she asked. "What did I do?"

"Nothing, Curly. She's just landing."

Elissa frowned and turned to follow the Doctor as he headed for the doors, her hands moving to rest on her hips. "My name's not Curly and what do you mean, 'she's landing'?"

The Doctor paused to properly look her in the eye and that was when he smiled for the first time. He reached for the doorhandle and something in his eyes made Elissa feel giddy. "Why don't you find out?" he said softly.

"What do you mean?"

"Give me your hand."

"Why?"

The Doctor sighed, exasperated and a touch amused, and wiggled his fingers impatiently. "Just trust me, Curly."

 _"Elissa."_

The Doctor's smile unfolded into a grin as Elissa reached for his hand despite her trepidation. "Trust me, Elissa." The lock clicked and the door pulled open, each second lasting an impossible eternity for Elissa. "Welcome to 1883."

Through the open doorway came a gust of ice-cold wind that chilled Elissa to her very core. She shivered, teeth chattering, and then gasped when she spotted what lay beyond the box's doors. There was no trace of the museum's bathroom stalls, sinks, and slightly green tiles. There was, however, snow.

"Merry Christmas!" called an unknown voice. "Long live Queen Victoria!"

It was nighttime and a gentle snowfall began to dust Elissa's mass of curly hair the moment she stepped outside. She shivered involuntarily as another breeze shot through her. The snow was blindingly white in comparison with the dark skin of her hands and forearms, and she gazed at it in wonder. She'd never seen snow in real life before.

It registered in her mind that there were other people around, but it somehow didn't register what that implied. So instead of caring what those people might think of her, Elissa laughed and tilted her head back to taste the snow like she'd seen countless others do in movies. In retrospect, it shouldn't have surprised her that it tasted like ice, yet it did.

Elissa turned at the sound of her name and rushed to the Doctor's side, several paces away inspecting a stack of wooden crates. "How?" she asked breathlessly, her cheeks already sore from smiling so broadly. "How did you do this?"

The Doctor smiled briefly. "I might tell you one day," he teased. "Now, I don't suppose you know what a Graske looks like, do you?" Elissa shook her head. "Mm, I didn't think so."

"What's a Graske?"

"A nasty little hobgoblin that conquers planets by replacing its citizens with changelings."

That made Elissa's smile drop. It also made her realize that something was very, very wrong. She stumbled away from the Doctor, the spell the snow had cast snapped in half with his serious answer.

"Who are you?"

The Doctor groaned in frustration, immediately recognizing the direction this line of questioning was leading to. "I already told you, I'm the Doctor. Can't we do this later?"

Elissa looked at the blue box and then back at the Doctor. " _Who are you?_ Where-… Where is this? What did you _do_?"

"I didn't _do_ anything!"

"Are you trying to kidnap me?"

Shaking his head, the Doctor stepped towards her in an attempt to comfort her, but the action only made Elissa race backwards as fast as she could. Her foot came down half on cooblestone and half on empty air at the edge of a sidewalk, and she teetered in mid-air for a second before toppling over. The Doctor was quick to help her to her feet, but the moment she was standing, she yanked her arm away and bolted down the street.

"Curly, wait!"

Barely missing getting run over by a horse-drawn carriage, Elissa jumped back onto the sidewalk and looked around to find someone or something familiar, a hiding place, _anything_ to keep her safe from the Doctor. The snow was slick under her shoes and she tripped, falling headfirst against a stack of crates and burlap sacks.

Something squealed as she landed and Elissa hardly had a moment to catch her breath before a short, red skinned thing with tentacles attacked to the back of its head popped up at her feet. Cackling, the creature pointed a little box at her head. The Doctor's yell pierced the winter air and both the creature and Elissa turned towards its source.

"Leave her alone!" the Doctor demanded, already running across the street.

The creature pointed its box at the first thing it saw after turning away from the Doctor, a little boy who stood paralyzed with fear just beside the heap of crates, sacks, and Elissa. A ray of wiggling blue light emenated from the box and the boy seemed to be sucked inside it, then reappeared in his original spot.

"No!"

A rainbow colored flash of light like a prism refraction was all that remained of the creature by the time the Doctor arrived at Elissa's side a few seconds later. Elissa was too focused on the boy who'd been attacked to fight the Doctor as he helped her up. The boy looked into her eyes and she felt her stomach twist into a knot when his eyes flashed green.

People were screaming as the Doctor dragged Elissa back inside the box. "What the fuck is going on?" she shouted over the distressing cries. "Doctor!"

He stared silently at the part of his arm Elissa had grabbed onto, watching her fingers curl into his coat sleeve as the rise and fall of her chest caught his attention from his periphery. "If I don't catch that Graske, I may never get my friend back, and we are wasting time the longer we stand here."

"Are you going to hurt me?"

The Doctor had never heard such an outrageous notion, but he could see it in Elissa's eyes that she was scared. " _What?!_ "

"You made me come into your weird box, you just appeared out of nowhere! I don't even know why still I'm talking to you because you scare the shit out of me and some crazy creature just tried to point a laser cube at me! What is going on? I don't understand!"

Closing his eyes as he raced through idea after idea, the Doctor tried to think of the best way to explain everything to this girl without wasting valuable time. Placing his hands on either side of her head, he opened his eyes and smiled apologetically at her. "I'm really sorry, Curly." Before she could protest or question him again, the Doctor smacked his temple against hers with enough strength to make him temporarily dizzy.

For Elissa, the transference of information from the Doctor's mind to hers felt a bit like a brain freeze. She groaned and doubled over with the heels of her hands buried in her eye sockets to soothe the ache deep within her skull. The image of Rose Tyler's face stained her eyelids, along with the memory of the Graske attacking her with its instrument and replacing her with a wickedly violent clone that could throw a mean right hook. Elissa rubbed her jaw at the thought of it and for a moment, she forgot that she was not, in fact, the Doctor.

"Rose," Elissa whispered, her lips tingling pleasantly as she recalled the woman's face. She suspected that the Doctor hadn't intentionally transferred the fact that he harbored a crush on Rose, but she also couldn't blame him for it; she already had a crush on her, too.

"Glad we're finally on the same page," the Doctor said as he jumped inside the TARDIS.

 _TARDIS_. The word didn't seem large enough, or impossible enough, for the box Elissa found herself piloting. Hell, she didn't even know what it meant, but she knew that it was special. She even got the distinct impression that the TARDIS was - well, maybe not alive, but _living_.

Elissa rubbed her temple between commands, the same question stuck at the forefront of her mind: just who is the Doctor? _A man who can give me information with a smack on the head, who flies a box, who seeks out little gnomic creatures with tentacles and lasers can't be real, can he? That's impossible!_ There was no other word that she could think of to describe her current circumstance. Yet, there he stood at the box's console and there she stood opposite him, helping him hunt down the Graske that had taken Rose Tyler.

"I was in the middle of my shift," said Elissa, gazing at the time rotor as it rose and fell.

The Doctor's head popped out from behind the time rotor. "Sorry?"

"At the museum. I was taking a bathroom break when you showed up."

"Oh… Do you need to go, or-?"

Elissa sniggered and shook her head. "No." She noticed the confused expression the Doctor wore as he looked at her. "Sorry, I was … just thinking."

"No need t'apologise," he muttered. "And look, I've found the Graske. It's on Griffoth."

Elissa paced around the console to look at the screen, which displayed a grainy picture of a vaguely purple planet that looked a bit like the moon. "Griffoth?" she echoed.

"The Graske homeworld." The Doctor typed a few things out on the keyboard and the screen changed to a display of a bulkhead. "There's a way inside, but it's shielded somehow. I can't get the TARDIS past it. Scans say there's at least three of those bulkheads out there."

Getting past those bulkheads was much less difficult than Elissa had anticipated because the Doctor had a tricck up his sleeve: the sonic screwdriver. It didn't look like much more than a silver tube with buttons and a light at the end, but the Doctor assured her it was a work of technological genius that he had crafted himself when he was much younger. Elissa was still smiling wondering what an even younger Doctor might have been like - scrawnier, perhaps - when the last bulkhead slid open to reveal a giant room full of containers.

Her smile faded away in the blink of an eye when she saw, through the foggy glass of one container, a blonde woman, a _human_. And there were more than just humans. Elissa could see a large, sickly green monster with claws longer than her head, and a baby blue skinned person with box-blue robes.

"Oh, my God."

"They must be in stasis," the Doctor whispered.

Elissa thanked her love of sci-fi for being able to understand what stasis likely was. She watched tiny little Graske scurry around the room, checking on control kiosks and what looked like iPads attached to the container walls, then hurry out of sight.

"Do you think Rose is here?"

The Doctor pressed his lips together. "She has to be," he said.

"So, what do we do?"

"We have to get her out of there, _all_ of them."

"How?"

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at the curious human he'd picked up and smiled faintly. "You're full of questions, aren't you?" Elissa managed to flash him an embarrassed expression. "I don't know. If I can get to one of those kiosks, maybe I can find out more about the system."

However, the moment the Doctor made a move from outside the protection of the bulkhead frame, a Graske spotted him and pulled a gun on him. "Get back!" he shouted. He and Elissa jumped to the opposite side of the doorway, just missing the gunshot as it flew past them and reflected off the metal walls behin them. The shot flew back into the stasis room, bouncing off of containers, walls, and kiosks alike until it finally shattered the glass on the container closest to the pair.

The giant green monster Elissa had caught a glimpse of earlier jumped out from inside the container with an outrageous cry. Recoiling into the wall, Elissa grabbed hold of the Doctor and hid behind his frame, hardly daring to peek over his shoulder. "It's alright," he said, resting a hand on his shoulder, just atop hers. "It's going after the Graske, not us."

Stealing a glance around the Doctor's body, Elissa spotted the tail end of the clawed creature as it trailed off down a row of containers in pursuit of a Graske. She breathed a sigh of relief and placed a hand over her heart to calm herself.

"I want you to stay here. I'm going over to that kiosk to try and fix all this, but if something goes wrong, I want you to run back to the TARDIS as fast as you can. Understand?" Elissa nodded solemnly and the Doctor smiled. "Good girl. Now keep an eye out for me."

True to her (unspoken) word, Elissa remained by the bulkead, her arms folded protectively over her torso as she looked about for other Graske or the claw-monster from earlier. She could hear the Doctor muttering to himself as he used his special screwdriver to search the kiosk for information. Suddenly, he exclaimed, "Eureka!", and slammed his hand down on the kiosk's surface.

Just then, the Graske and its terrifying attacker rounded a corner and headed straight for the Doctor. The monster, however, disappeared mid-stride in a flash of yellow light and the Graske skidded to a stop. The containers began to flash yellow all throughout the room, each one left empty after a flash, eventually leaving just Elissa, the Doctor, and one Graske.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor beamed at her, his wild hair a little wilder than when he left her. "I know where Rose is."

* * *

Something in Elissa's heart clenched when she saw Rose Tyler for the first time. The Doctor flew the TARDIS to a little apartment in London, circa 2005, where a beautiful family was celebrating Christmas morning together. When she and the Doctor exited the TARDIS, she noticed two things: the first being that they had landed in a very small kitchen where the TARDIS could barely fit, and the second being that Rose Tyler stood across the room and that she was very, _very_ lovely in person.

Rose ran into the Doctor's arms without hesitation, giggling softly when he lifted her up and her toes couldn't touch the floor. When she was back on solid ground again, she turned to Elissa and smiled, confused. "Ah, yes, introductions. Rose, this is Elissa. She helped me find you. Elissa, this is Rose."

"Hello," Elissa said softly, already completely smitten with the brown-eyed cutie gazing up at her.

"Hello." Rose's smile, which had previously been a mere upturn of the corners of her mouth, morphed into a full grin with her tongue caught deftly between her teeth, and that was when Elissa knew that she was done for.

"Come on, you two. Inside," the Doctor urged, already at the TARDIS doors.

If the owners of the apartment ever inquired who the hell the box owners/passengers were, Elissa never heard it - she was far too lost in the curve of Rose's smile to notice.

Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor began pacing around the console with his hands shoved in his trousers pockets. _I don't think I've ever actually seen someone wear pinstripes before_ , Elissa thought. _Nice shoes, though._

"So, Curly. Is it back to the museum for you? You were in the middle of your shift, weren't you?" Elissa hesitated to reply and the Doctor noticed. "Or maybe I can make it up to you."

"Make what up to me?"

The Doctor winked in Rose's direction as he explained. "Well, this was your first trip in the TARDIS and it wasn't exactly the best, now was it? I think I just about gave you a heart attack, not to mention those devious little Graske almost sticking you in stasis like Rose. In fact, why don't I make it up to you both and take you somewhere really, really special?"

Rose leaned forward so her hands were braced against the console. "What did ya have in mind?"

"Another planet. And I mean a proper planet, not a ditch in the road planet like Griffoth. How about-" The Doctor paused. "-New Earth?"

Elissa furrowed her brows. "New Earth?"

"Have you ever heard of apple grass?" the Doctor asked. When Elissa shook her head in response, he grinned. "Would you like to see it for yourself?" He toyed with one of the instruments on the panel and the look in his eyes made Elissa wonder just what the _hell_ he was talking about. "My granddaughter always told me it smelled like Granny Apples."


	2. New Earth: Part 1

**Author's Note: Not much to say other than the fact that I'm planning to separate the episodes into bite sized portions so it's easier for me to write. I'm thinking they'll usually be around 4,000 words or so.**

 **Word Count: 4,700**

* * *

Elissa hadn't thought very much about the first time she stepped on an alien planet and, in all truthfulness, it had been overwhelming and simultaneously underwhelming in a dingy sort of way. But this wasn't the case with New Earth. When the Doctor landed the TARDIS and opened the doors for her and Rose, Elissa found that she was overwhelemed by the incredible beauty that was New Earth.

The TARDIS stood atop a cliff of brilliantly green grass that overlooked an enormous body of water - if it was a lake or the ocean, Elissa couldn't tell, but it was beautiful all the same. Across the water stood a metal city that shone enough to make her eyes hurt and water, but she still thought it was oddly beautiful.

A loud _nyoom_ sounded overhead and the three of them ducked instinctively, tilting their heads back to see cars flying above them in the direction of the city. Elissa stared open-mouthed at the cityscape, her hair whipping around her face as the wind grew stronger and whistled sharply in her ears.

"It's the year five billion and twenty-three. We're in the galaxy M87, and this?" The Doctor chuckled and bobbed forward on the balls of his feet. "This is New Earth."

Rose let out a little breath. "That's just-. Well, it's just-."

"Not bad, eh?" The Doctor turned to Elissa. "Well? What do ya think?"

She shook her head in disbelief, hardly able to take in the sight before her. "It's…incredible."

The Doctor bumped his shoulder against hers with a proud grin. "When have I ever let you down?"

"I hardly know you."

"Give him time," Rose added, a poorly hidden smile tugging her lips before she'd finished speaking.

"Oh, don't you start, Rose," the Doctor groaned. "This is good, yeah?"

She nodded and looped her arm with his. "I'll never get used to this," she said, tilting her head in all directions. "Never. Different ground beneath my feet, different sky." As Elissa watched them interact, she wondered if maybe she was intruding on something that she shouldn't get involved with. There was a distinctly couply feeling about the way Rose Tyler leaned into the Doctor's chest, the way she smiled at him, and Elissa was incredibly disappointed in herself for already feeling jealous. "What's that smell?" Rose questioned.

The Doctor looped his arm with Elissa's as Rose had with him. "Apple grass!" he said excitedly; Elissa couldn't help smiling back at him.

Elissa closed her eyes and took a deep sniff. "Apple grass," she heard Rose echo with delight. "You were right," she added, drawing both Rose and the Doctor's attention. "It does smell like Granny Apples."

Rose hummed in agreement. "By the way, don't think that just because you talked your way out of mentioning a granddaughter means I'm letting it go." The Doctor rubbed his shoulder against his cheek since both of his arms were otherwise attached to his companions. "I still want to know what the hell you meant since you look maybe three years older than Elissa, but I _also_ want to enjoy New Earth and its apple grass." Rose took another deep whiff of the grass as a strong breeze whipped by and she sighed. "Oh, I love this. Can I just say, Doctor, travelling with you? I love it."

"Me too," he said and Elissa felt like a third wheel with a neon sign attached to it. She gently tugged her arm free from the Doctor's and retreated into herself, her arms folding over her torso as she took a step back. The Doctor looked over his shoulder at her with a curious expression. "Everything alright?"

A forced smile wasn't enough to dissuade the Doctor like she had hoped and instead, Rose turned to look at her as well. "You okay?" the sweet-hearted blonde asked.

Elissa considered lying, but something in the pit of her stomach made her speak up. "Uh, well," she said uncertainly, "I-I'm kinda feeling like a third wheel right now."

"Oh, my God, I'm so sorry! We're not dating!"

"Aren't you?"

Rose shared a look with the Doctor, then shrugged. "Well, sort of, but not really. But you don't have to feel the odd one out, love! I'll share him with you," she laughed, striding forward to grab hold of Elissa's hand and tug her into place between the two.

Elissa tried very hard to sound like a typical straight girl, thrilled to hold hands with a pretty boy like the Doctor, but the best response she could manage was a vaguely enthusiastic, "Oh, goody."

"So, what would you two like to do?"

Rose squeezed Elissa's hand. "I don't know. Can we stay out here for a little bit? It's so wonderful!"

"We can and-!" The Doctor stepped back and shrugged his coat off, then spread it out on the grass like a picnic blanket. "We can even be comfortable!"

Once Rose and Elissa had settled down on the coat, the Doctor plopped down on Elissa's right so that she was sandwiched between them both. The Doctor folded his hands behind his head and crossed his legs at the ankles, and Rose followed suit with her legs bent at the knees instead. Elissa suddenly felt very large in such a small space and as she adjusted herself to lie on her back, she was very aware of the length of the Doctor's torso and legs in comparison to hers and the curve of Rose's hip pressed into her.

The Doctor explained to them the story of how humans moved on from Earth after the sun had expanded and destroyed it, Rose not failing to mention how that had been her first date with the Doctor, and all Elissa could think of the entire time was that she was stuck between two smitten fools.

"So, what's the city called?" Rose asked.

"New New York."

"Oh, come _on_ ," Rose groaned.

"It is!" the Doctor insisted, smiling in response to Rose's stifled giggle. "It's the city of New New York. Strictly speaking, it's the fifteenth New York since the original, so that makes it New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York." He stopped when he noticed Rose and Elissa watching him, although their expressions were entirely different. "What?"

Rose shook her head slightly and her smile faltered for a moment. "You're so different," she said, turning onto her side with an arm propped beneath her head to support it. Her eyes raked across his face as if searching for something that simply wasn't there. Elissa tried not to feel the way both people were almost completely pressed against her.

The Doctor smiled and it made Rose smile again. "New New Doctor."

"Can we go and visit New New York, so good they named it twice?"

The Doctor followed Rose's example and jumped to his feet, offering Elissa his hand. "Well," he said as he snatched his coat off the grass, "I thought we might go there first."

Following the direction of his finger, Elissa spotted a massive building, elegantly designed with two spires that curved towards the sky. On one side of the building, she spotted a large moon design painted in green, a few shades darker than the apple grass.

"Why, what is it?" Rose hummed.

"Some sort of hospital. Green moon on the side - that's the universal symbol for hospitals," the Doctor explained, shucking his coat on and then pulling something out from a pocket inside it. It looked like a wallet with nothing inside it but a slip of paper. "I got this - a message on the psychic paper."

Elissa watched in awe as words appeared on the paper by an invisible hand, writing, "Ward 26. Please Come."

"Someone wants to see me."

Rose furrowed her brow and wrinkled her nose as she considered the message. "And I thought we were just sightseeing." She sighed, shrugged, and tightly grasped the Doctor's hand. "Well, alright, then. Let's go!"

Elissa started when Rose reached for her hand as well, tugging her a few inches closer with what Elissa guessed was nothing less than a trademark tongue-in-teeth smile. She felt her heart start hammering in her chest as the three of them sauntered off towards the hospital because, combined with the smell of apple grass and the sharp stinging sensation of the wind on her face, Elissa also felt Rose run her thumb along the back of her hand.

What she couldn't understand, however, was why this woman seemed to set her heart off like a gunshot. She mused that maybe in the Doctor's transference, he had shared more than he meant to - like, perhaps, his considerable crush on Rose. It was the only thing that made sense. Except… Well, except for the fact that Rose was _exactly_ Elissa's type.

The pale, cold fingers wrapped around Elissa's hand suddenly squeezed and Elissa's eyes snapped up to find Rose looking at her expectantly. "Hi," she grinned.

Elissa smiled. "Hi."

"Could I ask? You're American, right?"

"Yes."

"You ever been to New York? The original one?"

"Once when I was really little. I don't remember much except seeing the Statue of Liberty." Elissa thought for a moment and then laughed, recalling the story her mother had told her at least a dozen times. "Actually, my mom always told me that when I saw her for the first time, I said I wanted to marry her because she was so beautif-." Horrified, Elissa realized she'd just outed herself to two perfect strangers. Dropping Rose's hand like a hot potato, Elissa halted mid-step and tried frantically to think of a way to salvage the situation.

Rose and the Doctor both stopped and turned; the Doctor looked incredibly lost and Rose, bless her heart, was watching Elissa with a somewhat concerned expression. "Are you okay?"

"I-I-I…"

Realization lit up Rose's face a millisecond later. " _Oh._ "

"I'm so sorry," Elissa said in a rush. "I didn't mean to- to make you uncomfortable. I didn't know." _That you were like that_ , the sentence continued in her head.

" _Hey_ , you don't have to apologize, 'Lissa. Don't you ever apologize for being you." When Rose smiled, it seemed as though she shone as brilliantly as the sun. "Can I tell you a little secret? I'm bi."

"Oh!"

"Yeah!"

Exclaiming joyfully and holding back tears of relief, Elissa embraced Rose. She laughed when she noticed that Rose's head was several inches lower than hers, low enough for her to rest her chin atop the crown of her head.

"Sorry, what?"

Rose squeezed her arms around Elissa's waist once, then released her, stepping back to address the Doctor. "We just came out to each other, Doctor. That's a thing we still have to do in our time, remember?"

"Oh, right. Early twenty-first century." He hummed thoughtfully. "It gets better, though, trust me. You two have a lot to look forward to! New poetry - you've got to read some of Keaton St. James' work, he was absolutely _incredible!_ Best poet of the century! - and art and _books!_ The first genderfluid Prime Minister, Stonewall 2.0, Mary Lambert!"

"Did they really call it Stonewall 2.0?" Elissa questioned.

The Doctor scoffed. "No, I just can't remember what they actually called it."

* * *

The hospital entrance was made entirely of steel and glass, and Elissa found herself speechless as she walked inside. The temperature was a few degrees warmer once the doors closed behind them, which she didn't mind, but she preferred the cooler weather outside.

"You know," said the Doctor, "I never really liked hospitals."

Rose laughed incredulously. "Oh, bit rich coming from you!"

"I can't help it. They give me the _creeps_."

A voice with a similar accent to the Doctor's sounded over the speaker system. "The Pleasure Gardens will now take visitors carrying green or blue identification cards for the next fifteen minutes. Visitors are reminded that cuttings from the gardens are not permitted."

"Is everyone here British?"

The Doctor glanced at her, one eyebrow raised as his lips ghosted a smile. "How d'you mean?"

"Well, you and Rose are English. And the thing," she explained, gesturing overhead, "she was English, too. Isn't this supposed to be New York?"

"I never really thought about it," he mused. "But I'm also not English."

Elissa frowned, looked the man up and down exactly once, and then tilted her head to one side. "Aren't you?"

"Nope." He seemed to enjoy popping the 'p' at the end of the word.

"Australian?" she said, hopefully.

"Guess again."

"Try thinking a little more alien," Rose suggested.

Elissa snickered. "Kiwi?"

The Doctor beamed and shook his head. "Not a bird. And when she said alien, she meant literally."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The bigger on the inside box that travels in time didn't give it away?" the Doctor deadpanned, absently gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. "Blimey, I didn't think it'd be this hard to impress you, Curly."

"You're serious?"

"Of course I'm serious!"

Elissa shook her head in confusion; her brain felt like it might explode. "So, where are you from, then? Like, Mars? Oh! Vulcan? Is that real?"

The Doctor laughed and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, his shoulders shaking. "That _would_ be telling and no, I'm not from Mars."

"But you look human."

"You look Time Lord," he countered.

Rose interjected then, pointing at the Doctor with a playfully mocking expression, "Those're his people - Time Lords. He makes it sound all sophisticated, but really he's just thick."

"Oi!"

Turning around slowly, trying to take in every inch of the place, Elissa smiled to herself. Rose was witty, the Doctor was funny, and she couldn't find it in herself to be scared. The apple grass and New New York and the hospital brimming with cat nuns, it was all so incredi - wait, _what?_ Elissa did a double, then triple take as a woman strolled past her dressed in all white with some kind of fancy nun hat on her head and a feline face.

"They're cats," she heard Rose say.

"Now, don't stare." Elissa faced the Doctor, her mouth noticeably agape. "Think what you look like to them, all…pink and yellow." She didn't miss the way the Doctor's eyes lingered along Rose's body as he looked her up and down, but he had already moved on by the time she noticed. He gestured to one side of the room. "That's where I'd put the shop. Right there."

"The shop?" she asked, trailing after him with a little bounce in her step.

"Y'know, the hospital shop!" The Doctor had stopped in front of a wall with a panel between two steel doors. If she didn't know any better, she'd have said they were elevators. The Doctor pressed one of the upwards arrows and it lit up green. "You go in, buy some coffee and a sandwich, maybe some hospital merchandise."

"Merchandise? What're they gonna sell, needles? Stuffed animals in the shape of the hospital mascot?"

"They might!"

One of the doors slid open and Elissa was pleasantly surprised to see that it really was an elevator. "Somehow I thought they wouldn't have these," she said as they stepped inside. "It feels too normal."

"You'd be surprised about the things that haven't changed in the thousands of years the human race has been around for-"

"Hold on!" cried Rose, her voice slipping through the quickly closing doors of the lift. The Doctor's hand shot out towards the wall at the same time Elissa's did and they ended up knocking each other away. It wouldn't have mattered anyways, though, since there wasn't a control panel to fiddle with. "Wait!"

"Oh, too late," the Doctor called through the doors. "We're going up!"

There was a moment of silence, then, "It's all right, there's another lift!" Rose's voice was already growing faint as the lift shuddered to life and, well, lifted.

"Ward 26," the Doctor said in the general direction of the ceiling. "Oh, Rose! Watch out for the disinfectant!"

Elissa could barely make out the sound of Rose's voice when she answered, "Watch out for what?"

"The disinfectant!" Elissa winced as the Doctor yelled right in her ear.

"The _what_?"

"The disin-! Oh, you'll find out," he sighed.

"What's the disinfectant?" Elissa asked hesitantly.

The Doctor grinned. "What do you think it is?"

His elated expression made her feel a little uncomfortable because no one should be that pleased about disinfectant, of all things. "I don't know, but I get the feeling I'm not going to like it."

Another voice announced to them, in an English accent, of course, "Commence stage one disinfection."

Out of everything that the disinfectant could have been, Elissa hadn't expected a shower. As she stood in the elevator with the Doctor, both of them thoroughly drenched as endless amounts of slightly alcohol-smelling liquid waterfalled over their heads, she wondered why the hospital couldn't have just given them hand soap.

"Come on, Curly, don't look so glum!"

"I feel like a drenched rat," she grumbled, sounding a little more grumpy than she actually felt.

"I promise you don't look like one," the Time Lord laughed.

After the disinfectant downpour came a blast of comfortably warm air that dried their clothes before the lift stopped and opened its doors with a ding. After stepping beyond the elevator, Elissa was slightly taken aback by the sight of another cat person standing behind a reception desk. She stepped out from behind the desk with a just barely human smile that was both off-putting and friendly.

"How may I help you?" Another English accent, much to Elissa's confusion.

"Hello, I'm here to see a friend? I'm, uh, not actually sure who it is. I was sent an anonymous invitation. Maybe I could stick my head in, see if I recognize someone?"

"Right this way, sir, ma'am."

To the left of the reception desk was a broad, doorless doorway that opened up to a large room easily the same size as Elissa's house. On either side of the room, patients were situated in rows against the walls with curtains in between each person like any regular Earth hospital might do. But the patients were not human - one was a man, tall and muscular and _literally_ as white as snow, another was scarlet colored with a variety of tubes protruding from his bare chest, and the strangest of all was a small creature with dusty-colored scales instead of skin and no nose.

Elissa realized that in her shock, she had fallen behind and the Doctor and the cat person were already halfway through the room.

"The Sisters of Plentitude take a lifelong vow to help, and to mend," said the cat person as Elissa caught up to them. She tried to sneak a peek at the woman/cat/person's chest in search of a name tag, only to find nothing. _What on Earth am I supposed to call it? Her?_

Before Elissa had a chance to ask, a woman's voice interjected the brief silence. "Excuse me! Members of the public may only gaze upon the Duke of Manhattan with written permission from the Senate of New New York!"

"Sorry," Elissa mumbled, somewhat irritated. She didn't even want to look the man who, as far as she could tell, looked more like a piece of slate than a person.

"That's Petrifold Regression, right?" said the Doctor.

The man was large, overweight, and very sad. "I'm dying, sir," he moaned. "A lifetime of charity and abstinence, and it ends like this!"

 _No need to shout it from the rooftops, my dude_ , she thought. _Kind of negates the whole purpose._

The same snappy woman from before scowled at them. "Any statements made by the Duke of Manhattan may not be made public without official clearance," she said sternly. "Sister Jatt, a little privacy, please!"

The Sister, whose name Elissa hadn't caught since her ears seemingly hadn't caught up with her brain yet, took hold of a white curtain and pulled it across the Duke's area so he was out of sight. _Good riddance!_

"He'll be up and about in no time," the Sister assured her guests.

The Doctor only scoffed. "I doubt it. Petrifold Regression? He's turning to stone. There won't be a cure for - oh, a thousand years? He might be up and about, but only as a statue."

"Have faith in the Sisterhood," said the Sister. She gestured to the remaining patients. "But is there no one here you recognize? It's rather unusual to visit without knowing the patient."

"No, I think I've found him."

Following the Doctor's gaze, Elissa saw a large glass container reminiscent of an aquarium that housed the largest head she'd ever seen in her entire life. Sunlight poured over the container from the nearby window, which offered a beautiful view of the apple grass fields and the city across the water. As they drew near, Elissa felt as though someone had poked her brain with a stick. She grimaced and rubbed her fingers against the base of her neck uncomfortably.

The Doctor was talking, but she couldn't hear him properly because there was a voice in her head that was not her own. _'Rupiya? …Is that you?_ '

"What the fuck?" Elissa yelped.

The Doctor made a panicked noise. "Language!"

"There's a voice! In my head, there's a voice!"

"That would be the Face of Boe." The source of the new voice was another cat person, slightly younger than the Sister who had met them at the reception desk. "He's telepathic."

"But-!" Elissa suddenly felt nauseous. "He knew my name! My _real_ name! How could he know that?"

The Doctor gazed curiously into her eyes. "Your name's not Elissa?"

"Not technically, but is that important? How does he know my name?" she demanded.

"Well, if the Face of Boe is telepathic, and he is, then it's likely that he was able to pick up base feelings or information about you through your telepathic brain waves."

"I'm sorry, my _what?_ "

"All humans have them, Curly, but for the most part, your species never really developed far enough to use them. So they lay dormant in the back of your mind, waking up if you come in contact with the right person. Or some microwaves, now that I think about it." The Doctor waved with a frown. "Anyways. Right now, the Face of Boe's asleep, but his mind is still active. Human brains have a way of reaching out telepathically without you lot even trying."

He could see that although she understood him, Elissa was still highly skeptical if the wary glances she was sending in Boe's direction were anything to go off of. "I promise it's nothing threatening, Elissa. It just takes some getting used to." The Doctor rested a hand on her bicep when she remained silent. "Are you okay?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"Yeah, fine. I just…need a minute, I think."

"Okay." The Doctor watched as Elissa inched towards the window, skirting around the Face of Boe's container with her arms folded tightly over her torso. He kept her within sight, but turned his face towards Novice Hame to address her. "What's wrong with him?" he asked, nodding at Boe.

Hame inhaled sharply, her grey-blue eyes softening. "I'm so sorry. I thought you knew. The Face of Boe is dying." Elissa pretended not to listen from her spot at the window.

"Of what?"

"Old age. The one thing we can't cure. He's thousands of years old. Some people say millions, although that's impossible."

The Doctor smiled. "Oh, I don't know. I like impossible. _I'm_ here." He stepped forward to place his hand on the glass and crouched down. "I look a bit different, but it's me, it's the Doctor."

* * *

Sometime later, after the Doctor had wandered towards the reception desk in search of something to drink, Elissa found herself coming back to face the Face of Boe.

"Hello."

Elissa flashed a half smile in the cat's direction. "Hello."

"I'm Novice Hame. Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, thank you. I'm sorry for causing a scene earlier, but this is all new for me."

"Of course," Novice Hame answered, nodding. "I understand. I take it you don't know the Face of Boe, then?"

"Oh, no. No, I'm just a friend of the Doctor's. Sort of." She looked around the room, realizing that Rose was nowhere to be found and had, in fact, been missing for quite some time. She asked the Doctor about it when he returned a minute later with two cups of water in hand.

The Doctor handed one cup to Novice Hame and the other to Elissa. "You know, I asked Sister Jatt about her earlier, but she hasn't found anything yet. Maybe I should call her."

"You have a phone?" For some reason, that surprised Elissa. It hadn't occurred to her that aliens had cell phones, too.

One corner of the Doctor's mouth curled into a half-smile. "No," he admitted. "Do you?"

 _Whoops! Guess they don't_ , Elissa thought. "Yeah. You can borrow it if you want."

The Doctor took out his screwdriver again and, after Elissa handed it over, he pointed the blue light on the end at the battery. "There. I'll get you something better when we get back to the TARDIS, but that should take care of this call. Don't want you getting overcharged for interstellar long distance calls, now do we?"

Elissa giggled. "No."

"Doctor?" Hame interjected, drawing his attention from Elissa's phone. "You're very kind to have brought me this," she said, holding up her cup, "but there's really no need."

"Nonsense! You're working."

Hame shrugged lightly and turned her eyes to the Face of Boe. "There's not much to do, except maintain his smoke. And I suppose I'm company," she added thoughtfully. "I can hear him singing, sometimes, in my mind. Such ancient songs."

"It must be beautiful," Elissa murmured.

"It's sad, but, yes, it is beautiful."

The Doctor approached the Face of Boe's container again, inspecting the sleeping face. "Am I the only visitor?" he questioned.

"The rest of Boe-kind became extinct long ago," Novice Hame explained. "He's the only one left. Legend says that the Face of Boe has watched the universe grow old. There's all sorts of superstitions around him. One story says that just before his death, the Face of Boe will impart his great secret, that he will speak those words only to one like himself."

"What does that mean?" the Doctor and Elissa asked in unison, sharing a smile upon realization.

Hame shook her head. "It's just a story."

"Tell me the rest," the Doctor urged.

"It's said he'll talk to a wanderer. To the man without a home. The lonely God."

Elissa's shoulders trembled as a strange chill ran down her spine. She laughed softly, mostly to herself. "Sounds like a pretty dramatic story to me." She didn't notice the way the Doctor's face changed ever so slightly.


End file.
